"Well said Gringo."
"as someone who was saved through the bus ministry of an ifb church - all i can say is excellent post gringo... .. thank you for saying that....."
What great memories I had on the buses, Aleshanee.
We had a lady in our church that had been a missionary to Africa. Once she came back from the mission field, she became the church missionary, sort of. The church provided her with a car and she, over the years, became well known as she would go out into the city and visit and schedule little children to be picked up on our buses. I remember that as a child, I enjoyed going with her, not because I was a good kid but because she always had freshly baked doughnuts in her car! As a teenager, she got me involved in the buses and we'd go all over the city picking up the little kids. Besides AWANA, we also had what we called the "Joy Club" and every week on Thursday afternoons, we'd go out and pick the little children up and bring them to church for food, fun and flannelgraph (Bible study). Then, on Sundays, we'd pick them up again.
Just like you, some of our kids turned out to be gems. I remember one little kid who today, is the pastor of a church in my home area. One never knows who or what one is dealing with. Each child is special.
Even little boys like the one sitting next to me one Sunday on the way to church. He couldn't have been more than 7 or 8 and I guess he was terrified to say something but there he sat looking so angelic. He looked up at me, opened his mouth and vomited all over me. LOL.
Clarence Sexton, the pastor in Tennessee and founder of Crown College, is also a product of the bus ministry. Speaking of him, he headed up the bus ministry of Highland Park Baptist Church when he was a student at Tennessee Temple. I was also a student and I helped out too. That church had many red and white buses. Every Saturday, they would fix us lunch bags to take as we went out on bus visitation. Then on Sunday afternoons, after the regular service, we'd go all over the Chattanooga area picking up kids for what we called "Sunday School II". I mentioned memories . . . not every little kid was well behaved. I remember one time we were having a service in one of the theater style class rooms at the college and a water pipe burst in the ceiling and we lost total control of those kids. They went running all over the place . . . memories.